


Spirit Miraculous Origins, Part 1

by Blairdiggory



Series: Spirit Miraculous AU [2]
Category: Miraculous Ladybug, Paranatural (Webcomic)
Genre: After this is finished it will be Max and Isaac, Gen, this is the first part of the origin stories!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-19
Updated: 2017-06-02
Packaged: 2018-11-02 16:59:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10948830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blairdiggory/pseuds/Blairdiggory
Summary: How did Isabel (Spinner) and Ed (the Artist) come to be Mayview's first superheroes?





	1. Spinner's Origins

Spinner and the Artist were the first of the superheroes to show up.

They weren’t the first heroes in HISTORY, of course. The same heroes, under different names and different disguises, has always been around. This, however, was the first time they’d come to Mayview. 

It had been… surprising for Isabel to see her grandfather give her a genuine gift. She’d been trained to fight from a young age by him, and generally he gave her new training equipment for her birthday. But her twelfth birthday was different. 

After her party, Isabel returned to her room to find a box on her nightstand. 

“To Isabel, From Grandpa,” the tag said. “P.S. Don’t make me regret this.”

Well, that was typical, Isabel thought. However, presents were presents, and Isabel opened the package to find a hair comb. 

Huh? It was fairly simple in design, a plain black to hide in her hair. Grandpa had never been one to give her beauty products (did other grandpas do that? That was weird, right?), so Isabel immediately thought it might be an heirloom or something. Regardless, she went to the mirror, wrapped her hair in a bun, and inserted the comb into it. 

Immediately, a flash of white illuminated the room, blinding Isabel. She flinched and rubbed her eyes, and when she opened them, a very large spider was sitting on her nightstand. 

At least, it LOOKED like a spider. It appeared to be an origami creation. Isabel began to inspect the spider, when it spoke. 

“Hello, Isabel!”

Immediately, Isabel took off her shoe and smashed the spider. The spider phased through her shoe. 

“Isabelllll, whyyyy?” asked the spider, in a hurt voice. 

“What the heck are you?” Isabel gasped, still holding her shoe. 

“I am a kwami!” said the spider. “My name is Eightfold! I’m here to give you superpowers!”

“…excuse me?”

“You heard me!” 

Isabel stared at Eightfold. 

“Hmm, I’m just now realizing how crazy that might sound to you,” said Eightfold. 

“You think?”

“Let me explain,” said the spider. “There’s evil afoot in Mayview! And you’ve been given the opportunity to stop it!”

Ok, so, even though she was incredibly freaked out by the spider, Isabel was totally ready to accept being a superhero and punching bad guys in the face. She may not believe the spider (kwami) about anything, but she at least had to try. Because superpowers. 

“And how do I stop this evil?” Isabel asked warily. 

“Just say “Book, open!” and you’ll be transformed into your superhero form, costume and everything! And you’ll have a book to fight stuff!” 

“A… a book?”

“It’s a lot cooler than it sounds. It has the ability to create objects through the book’s paper!”

“So, I can make, like, weapons and stuff?” Isabel asked incredulously. 

“Totally! And anything else you need to save the day. The only limit is your imagination!” Eightfold explained. “You also have a special power called Paper Cut. Normally, you need to be in physical contact with the book to be able to wield it. But when you yell the name of the attack, it transforms into whatever you need without you needing to touch it. But you have to be careful! You only have five minutes until you transform back into your civilian self, and we don’t need anyone to find out who you are!” 

“Anyone?” asked Isabel.

“Anyone,” Eightfold said. “Not even-“

Isabel, thinking of how she’d tell Ed about this the second she confirmed her superpowers, wasn’t listening.

“So I just say ‘Book, open!’, and-“

Eightfold jumped into the air. The kwami’s body became a glowing, white speck and zoomed at Isabel’s head. Isabel ducked, and Eightfold shot into her comb. The comb turned a deep red with white circles, similar in appearance to the kwami. 

Isabel’s body shimmered with red sparkles, and she transformed from the head down. She hadn’t realized she had closed her eyes, but when the light had stopped manifesting from her body, she opened them. 

Her regular jeans and t-shirt had become some sort of paper-looking armor. She touched the material to find it strangely strong despite its appearance. She did a few stretches and jumping jacks to find that it was lightweight and flexible, too. 

At her hip was the book Eightfold had mentioned. Isabel took it off her belt and examined it. It was black with a red black widow mark on it, but besides that, it looked like a regular book. Isabel wondered how on earth she was supposed to make weapons out of it (maybe she should have asked Eightfold first). Did she actually have to fold stuff like in origami? She wasn’t very good at that. Isabel folded a page of the book, attempting to make a sword or something, when the book transformed. The book exploded into paper and, with the black widow mark as the handle, shaped itself into a sword. 

Wicked, thought Isabel. But did it work like a normal sword? She pointed it at her lamp and gave it a light slash. 

The sword ran completely through the ceramic and shattered the lamp.

It certainly does work like a normal sword, thought Isabel. She heard footsteps coming towards her door. 

“Isabel? Are you ok?” one of her grandfather’s students asked. “I heard a crash.”

Oh, man, thought Isabel, thinking about Eightfold’s warning to tell nobody about her powers. If they came in and see her this way…

Isabel didn’t have time to run and lock the door. 

“Paper Cut!” she whispered, throwing the book/sword at the door. It turned into a paper padlock and locked her door. 

“Are you sure?” asked the student. They pulled on the door, only to find it locked. Isabel let loose a sigh. It had worked. 

“Yeah, I just knocked my lamp over,” she yelled. “I’ll grab something to clean it up later.”

“Ok…”

Footsteps faded away from the door. 

Now, Isabel had five minutes until she detransformed. Now what? She didn’t dare grab the padlock in case someone else tried to come in. But how could she detransform immediately? Maybe she should have asked Eightfold how to do that before becoming…

Becoming who? What should her superhero name be?

Paper Girl! 

No, that was dumb. 

Spider-Woman!

Pretty sure that might’ve been taken by Marvel or something. Also it wasn’t too original. 

Isabel spent the next five minutes thinking up names for herself. She noticed that with every minutes that passed by, one of the circles on her hair comb disappeared. When the circles were gone and she transformed back into herself, she had decided on Spinner, sort of like the spider kwami. It sounded pretty cool, if she did say so herself. 

Eightfold game out of the comb a little woozy. 

“Let’s be careful about how you say that in the future,” the kwami said. “We can’t have you randomly transforming in front of people.” 

“Yeah, can’t have people knowing who I am, right?”

“Yeah, not even your partner.”

“…my what now?” 

“Every superhero needs a partner in crime!” said Eightfold. 

“Isn’t the point of superheroes to stop crime? And therefore they don’t need a partner in it?” Isabel asked.

“We’re gonna ignore my word choice for now. But you still have a partner! And he’ll help you fight evil!” said Eightfold. 

Isabel pulled at a strand of her hair.

“And what is this evil? And who is my partner?” she asked. 

“I’m… not entirely sure about either of those questions.”

“Oh.”

“I just know that I was given to you!” said the kwami. “And that means there’s danger! It’ll be your job to find out what it is and beat it! And I’m sure you and your partner will find it eventually!”

“Ok? And how do I know what the evil is? I mean, Mayview is a WEIRD town, so it could be anything!” said Isabel. 

Suddenly, a loud boom shook the dojo. Eightfold looked at Isabel. Isabel looked at Eightfold.

“That’s definitely it,” they said at the same time. 

“Book, open!” Isabel yelled. Nothing happened. 

“I’m too exhausted. I need something to restore my energy before you can transform again!” said the kwami. 

“Like food?” Isabel asked.

“Yes! Exactly like food!”

“What do you like to eat?”

“Do you have any young adult vampire romance novels?”

“…excuse me?”

“I eat books! Om nom nom!” said Eightfold, hopping up on Isabel’s shoulder. “So hurry up and gimme something to eat! We need to get going!”

Isabel rushed toward her bookshelf and grabbed a novel she had never bothered reading. She handed it up to Eightfold. 

“So, how do you-?”

Eightfold opened her mouth and greedily tore into the book.

“Oh. That’s how.”

“Mm-hmm!”

“Stop talking, keep chewing! We have a bad guy to beat!” said Isabel anxiously. She was itching to fight something with her new powers, and time was running out.


	2. The Artist's Origins

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where did Mayview's second superhero, the Artist, come from?

It made no sense to Ed why he was getting a present on ISABEL’s birthday, but hey, presents were presents, and he was not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. 

“To Ed, From Grandpa,” said the tag. “P.S. Don’t make me regret this.”

Grandpa very rarely gave him presents, and when he did, they were usually something useful, like weapons. Very rarely were they candy or videogames. That sucked. 

Ed unwrapped the present quickly and found… an anklet. 

What the heck? Grandpa was giving him JEWELRY? Ah, well, it did look sort of cool. A simple chain with a bangle hanging off it. Ed put the anklet on, if only just to show Grandpa how grateful he was for the gift (not doing this might have resulted in a lack of presents for months). 

As soon as he fit it around his ankle, it began to glow and showered the room with a blinding green light. The light glared around Ed’s glasses, blinding him temporarily. He took them off, rubbed them free of dirt, and when he put them back on, he saw a monkey sitting on his desk. 

At least, it looked like a monkey. Whatever it was definitely had the face, ears, and hands of a monkey (heck, it even had a tail), but something was… wrong about it. It was glowing green, and its hair was white, with black tips that looked as though they had been dipped in paint. 

“What the heck.”

“Hey, Ned,” said the creature, not looking up and cleaning his nails. 

“Woah! How did you almost know my name?” Ed asked. 

“I’m a kwami. I know stuff,” said the creature.

“What’s a kwami?”

The creature laughed.

“Not the brightest bulb, are you?” he asked.

“Well, considering I’ve never heard the term ‘kwami’ before, and you literally just appeared in my room- hey, speaking of which, how did you get in here?” asked Ed.

“I came from your anklet,” said the creature. 

“I don’t think you could fit in there,” said Ed, gaping at the monkey-man, who was at least six feet tall. 

“I’m magic. I can fit anywhere.”

“Oh, cool! Like a genie?”

“No, like a kwami.”

“Oh.”

The creature sighed. 

“I guess I’m supposed to introduce myself. I’m Muse, and I’m the kwami that inhabits your anklet. I’m here to give you superpowers.”

“What! Really!” Ed gasped. Wait til he told Izzy about this!

“Yeah, really! But you’ll have to work hard and beat people up if you wanna do anything good with these powers! Because there’s an evil in Mayview, and you have to stop it.”

Ed froze. 

“What kind of evil?” 

“Heck if I know. I just know that I’m here, so there has to be evil, so you have to fight it.”

“How do I fight it?”

You just say the magic words ‘Paint On’, and I’ll transform you into a superhero,” Muse said.

“Cool! What sort of powers do I have?” asked Ed.

“You have the power to paint stuff-“

“Oh.”

“-and whatever you paint, you can use as a weapon-“

“Oh!”

“-AND you have a special power called Optical Illusion. It allows one thing you paint to come to life, but you only have five minutes before you turn back into your pathetic, normal self. “

“Why’s that bad?” asked Ed.

“BECAUSE, dumbo, nobody can know who you are. It’ll just alert the evil to your presence, and it’ll probably attack you and everyone you love.”

“That… would certainly be a problem.” But not even tell Isabel? thought Ed. It didn’t seem right.

“So you can’t tell anyone,” said Muse. “Not even your partner.”

“I have a partner?” 

“Weren’t you listening to anything I just said? Yes, you have a partner,” said Muse, blowing his hair out of his face. 

“Who are they?”

“Heck if I know. You’ll figure it out eventually.”

Ed wanted to ask a thousand more questions. Why him? Did Grandpa know about this? Would Isabel really be in danger if he told her? Before he could voice any of his thoughts, a large boom shook the dojo. 

“What was that?”

Muse looked a little too excited.

“That, Ned, sounded like an explosion. It’s time for you to become the superhero you can probably be.”

“Alright,” Ed said nervously. “Paint on!”

Suddenly, his body was enveloped in a green light. Muse shrunk into a tiny ball of light and entered the anklet, which turned gold. The charm on it became a miniature paintbrush. Once the light dissolved, Ed was able to look in the mirror in his room, and he found himself to be a close replica of his kwami. His glasses became goggles, his shirt and pants mimicking Muse’s armor, and bangles adorned his wrists and neck. He had a paintbrush for a tail. His outfit looked SO cool. 

Another explosion. Ed hopped to the window in his room, picked up his tail, and drew a ladder in midair to get himself down to the ground. Once he was outside the dojo, he headed to downtown Mayview where police sirens were already going off.


	3. The Fight Against Hokage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Spinner's and the Artist's first fight!

Isaac O’Connor’s day had been horrible, to say the least. 

Nobody quite understood his anime phase, and the kids making fun of his Naruto headband had been the last straw. It sucked that nobody understood him. It sucked being the odd kid out. 

Isaac sat in one of the chairs at the food court at the mall. He was trying not to cry, not for the first time today. A small, dark butterfly flew by, then landed on him. He took it as a sign that his dramatics weren’t in vain, but something was wrong. The butterfly was too heavy when it knocked into him. His line of vision narrowed, then he a hissing voice in his ear. 

“Hokage, you have been in the shadows of others for too long. You have always been better than them.”

“Who is this? Who are you?” Isaac said. At least, he thought he said it. The world was beginning to swirl around him.

“I am a friend, here to get you revenge on those who have shunned you. All you need to do in return is give me two objects in return. A hair comb and an anklet that have long been lost to me.”

Isaac felt his senses warping and his mind going numb. He couldn’t help but answer the voice.

“I’ll do whatever you say.”

His common sense shut down. Rage filled him. Isaac smiled as he felt his body transform. His clothes turned into a baggy orange and black jumpsuit. His hair spiked around his face. He looked in the window of a shop, pleased to see that he looked so similar to Naruto. Just one thing…

“Hey, ninjas don’t fight with katanas!” he said, pulling a sword from its sheath at his left side. 

“Look, do you want my help or not?” the voice hissed exasperatedly.

“Fine.”

Hokage leapt up in a backflip, slicing an umbrella of one of the food court tables in the process. It cut cleanly in two. At the sound of the clatter, people looked up and stared. Who the heck was this kid in costume? He must have toppled the umbrella. They resumed what they were doing. Hokage was furious.

“I am the villain Hokage, and you will pay attention to me!” he screamed. He slammed his sword into the nearest table, and it cut in half. The patrons at the table screamed as they caught sight of his katana.

Hokage grinned at them. This was going to be fun.

\-------------------

Spinner bounded over the trees towards the sirens, which sounded like they were coming from the strip mall. Her superpowers gave her superhuman strength and the ability to leap in huge bounds. She noticed something keeping pace with her among the forest. Fearing the worst, she waited until she was just ahead of the shadow, then leaped at it and slammed into it. 

The boy she slammed into fell to the ground, but got to his feet again quicker than a regular human being could. 

“Who are you?” she demanded. She took in the boy’s costume. Bangles, goggles, a jumpsuit, and… a tail?

“Who are YOU?”

The boy asked. He took his tail and poised it in front of him like a weapon. Just in case, Isabel took out her book and prepared to strike. 

“I asked you first,” she said.

“I asked you second.”

Another explosion sounded. They both looked warily at the source of the noise, and, upon realizing that neither of them were the cause of the ruckus, slowly put their weapons away. 

“I’m Spinner. I’m here to save Mayview.”

“Oh, cool! I’m… an artist,” he finished lamely.

“An artist?”

“Um, actually, I’m THE Artist,” he stuttered. “And I’m also here to save Mayview!”

“So YOU’RE the partner my kwami was talking about,” said Spinner incredulously. 

“My kwami said the same thing!”

“Cool! High five!”

The two high-fived, then remembered why they were there. 

“We’ve got people to save!” said the Artist. 

“Let’s go!” said Spinner. 

They bounded through the trees again. When they came to the lake, Spinner crafted a boat out of paper, while the Artist drew a boat. 

“Hop in!” they said at the same time. They paused. 

“So you can make things out of paper?” said the Artist. 

“Yeah. And you can paint things to life?” said Spinner.

“Pretty much.”

“Ok. Cool. We know each other’s powers. Guess we should head out.”

The two headed across the water towards the strip mall. They could see the place in ruins, with so many things sliced into ribbons. Both of the superheroes’ expressions turned grim. 

“What’s your special ability?” asked Spinner. 

“I can bring one of my paintings to life,” said the Artist. “I think most of my stuff is stationary unless I use my power. What can you do?”

“I can make something that isn’t connected to my book,” said Spinner. Indeed, the boat was spilling out of her book, and the superheroine was using the book as the steering wheel. 

“That’s really cool!” said the Artist. 

“Thanks! You’re power’s pretty neat too!”

“Thanks!”

Almost there, they saw a flash of orange leap into the sky, flash something in his hand, then strike the chimney on a building below him. The chimney shattered, and smoke began pouring out of it. 

“You ready for this?” said the Artist. 

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” said Spinner, her heart racing. 

They reached the edge of the shore and sprang into action. They bounded towards the figure in orange, who was using the butt of his sword to smash all the windows in the strip mall. Spinner and the Artist landed right in front of him, and the boy gaped. 

“You know it’s not cool to smash windows, right?” said the Artist, though he seemed a bit nervous. 

The boy scowled. 

“I am Hokage, and I will NOT be told what is or isn’t cool!”

“Your name is… what?”

“Hokage! It’s a title bestowed upon the ninja village’s leader! He’s the strongest shinobi in the village!”

“So, like… I didn’t understand half the words in that sentence,” said Spinner.

“It’s from Naruto!” grumbled Hokage.

“Like the Japanese thing?” asked the Artist. 

“Yes! Exactly!” 

“Hokage!” yelled the voice in his ear. “Those two have the comb and anklet Miraculous! Get them for me, and I’ll make sure revenge is yours!”

Hokage leered at the two, locating where their Miraculous were. 

“If you two give me your comb and anklet, I’ll stop destroying everything,” he lied. 

“How about we just fight to the metaphorical death? That sounds like a much better option,” Spinner growled, pounding her fist into her hand. 

“Emphasis on METAPHORICAL,” said Ed. “Because murder is also not cool.”

Hokage glowered at the two superheroes and put his katana between them. 

“Ready when you are,” he said. 

Spinner grabbed her book and lunged at Hokage. She turned her book into a sword and attempted to slam it into Hokage’s, but the paper shredded in two. Hokage grinned, and struck at her again, but she quickly recovered and used her book as a shield. 

The Artist drew himself a sword launched himself at the other boy. Hokage, thinking his sword would also go through this boy’s weapon, was caught by surprise when he hit solid ink, and the two of them stumbled. 

Spinner, realizing her weapon was useless against the boy’s sword, left the Artist to the swordfight. Using her book as a shield (surprisingly, the katana couldn’t cut through her book as it did the paper), she began striking the boy where he couldn’t defend himself as well. She aimed a kick at his legs, and Hokage jumped back. The Artist tried to use the butt of the sword to hit his opponent in the shoulder, but his tail, which was attached to the sword, was too short to reach, and Hokage was able to get out of reach to regroup.   
While the Artist drew himself a better sword, Spinner aimed her book at Hokage and created wave after wave of paper, attempting to throw him off balance. Hokage, with lightning fast reflexes, was able to swipe away the waves, but only barely. It was taking all of his concentration to cut the paper apart, so the Artist jumped behind the boy and slammed the butt of his sword into the boy’s back.

Hokage crumpled in between the sheets of paper. Spinner kept piling the paper on, hoping he would flounder in the paper and lose his katana. She stopped after some time, when the pile was twice as tall as she was, and nearly as wide. Nothing in the pile moved. 

The police had barricaded the strip mall, their sirens still going off. The explosions from earlier, the superheroes saw, had come from gas explosions in the back of restaurants, while some had just been crashes of buildings they had mistaken for explosions. 

People who had been hidden during the attacks began to come out of hiding. Spinner and the Artist recognized a few faces from school and thought it best to not look to closely at them, lest they find out their secrets. One group of the citizens containing the Artist’s best friends, Cody, Jeff, Violet, and Lisa, remained near the back of a restaurant, the sitting area reaching out over the water. He’d have to get them out of there soon.

Just as the Artist removed his focus from the paper mountain, Hokage shot up from under it. As he launched himself into the sky, Spinner saw paper cuts all along his face and hands. The boy was furious. 

The paper zoomed back into Spinner’s book as it collapsed. 

“Did you really think a bunch of PAPER could hold ME?” Hokage laughed. He saw the Artist turn from his friends on the dock and got a wicked idea. It was time to take hostages. That would force the heroes’ hands. 

Hokage leaped towards the restaurant, Spinner and the Artist close behind. Hokage took his katana, sank it into the wood of the restaurant’s outside sitting area, and cleaved it in two. The dock severed completely from the strip mall, and it, along with his friends, began to float away. It was uneven and slowly began to take on water.

“No!” yelled the Artist. He was torn between helping his friends and beating this supervillain. 

Spinner sensed her partner’s distress, and though she didn’t know the group in the lake that well, she knew she had to help them. 

“Paper Cut!” she yelled, and she threw her book to the edge of the dock. The book unfurled tendrils of paper, which grew and thickened until they formed a bridge that stretched from one end of the dock to the one afloat in the water. 

The group in the water hesitated as they watched Hokage jump to attack the bridge. The bridge kept their side of the dock from sinking, but they likely wouldn’t come over until Hokage wasn’t a threat to their crossing. 

The Artist was furious that this villain would attack his friends. He erased the sword he had and now drew a stick figure pirate with a sword. 

“Optical Illusion!” he yelled, and the stick figure sprang to life. It jumped up to attack Hokage, and the Artist followed suit. Spinner left her book by the edge of the water and headed into battle. 

The fight was now three against one, and Hokage was losing ground quickly. No matter where he turned, he had to parry an attack. He had to get the two Miraculous soon to end it. The easiest one to get would be the Artist’s anklet. As Spinner attempted to roundhouse kick his knees, he leaped over her leg and aimed for the Artist. He wrapped his hands around the Artist’s ankle and began yanking on the anklet’s chain. 

Out of instinct, the Artist tried to kick Hokage off, and his superhuman strength jolted the villain to the right, knocking the orange-haired boy’s head into one of the restaurant chairs. The plating on Hokage’s headband crumpled. 

A small dark butterfly flew out of the broken headband. Clutching his head, the world around Hokage turned into stars of color. His outfit changed into his old t-shirt and jeans. 

The Artist and Spinner recognized the kid from their school. How on earth did he become a supervillain? The boy looked around, shaking his head.

“What happened?” he said to no one in particular. He stared at Spinner and the Artist. “What are you wearing?”

Upon realizing that the danger was gone, the four shipwrecked kids ran across the bridge Spinner had made. Spinner picked up her book again, as her comb blinked. She had two more minutes before she transformed. 

Without knowing what she was doing or why she was doing it, Spinner made her book’s paper snatch up the black butterfly and slammed the book shut on it. Horrified that she had killed it, she opened the pages, only to find a stark white butterfly fly out. 

“What the heck was that?” asked the Artist, but just as he finished the question, the book sputtered out a wave of pages that began to consume the entire strip mall. 

“What the-!” Spinner said, trying and failing to close the book. As the pages zoomed around the strip mall, everything they touched righted itself. The chimneys, the boilers, and the dock all reassembled themselves, and broken windows magically fixed themselves. The Naruto headband flattened itself out. All signs of the supervillain attack disappeared. As the pages finished their cleaning, they returned to the book, pristine white as thought nothing had happened. 

The Artist’s anklet beeped. One minute to go. He and Spinner had to get out of there. 

Suddenly, one of the policemen stumbled into their path, shaking. 

“W-what just happened?” he asked, attempting to keep his cool. “Who are you people?”

Spinner and the Artist looked at each other, grins breaking out onto their faces. 

“We are Spinner and the Artist,” said Spinner, looping her arm around the Artist in a hug.

“And we are Mayview’s new superheroes!” said the Artist. 

And with that, they leaped away, bounding to their respective destinations.


	4. Identities Revealed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The end of this origin story! Stay tuned for Max's and Isaac's, coming up eventually!

It hadn’t been easy for Isabel or Ed to keep their superhero gigs secret from each other, especially as the months wore on. They’d wanted to tell each other the moment they got their powers, but after that attack, they weren’t too sure. 

They were too afraid of the other getting hurt because of them. Whoever had sent those butterflies (akumas, they found out they were called) meant to do some serious damage to get the Miraculous they possessed. Isabel knew Ed was good in a fight, and Ed knew Isabel was good too, but the perpetrator was just too powerful and too dangerous for someone without superpowers to face. What if something happened? 

It hurt to keep their secrets. They’d always been very open with each other, but now, each of them knew the other was hiding something big, and they were very aware that the other was aware that they had a big secret too. There was no asking for one secret without divulging the other. So communication began to falter between the two. 

It hurt, but the people they’d grown up with (their grandfather, Mr. Spender) always seemed to push their own well-being aside for the greater good, so that’s what they did too. Saving Mayview was worth the rift in their friendship, hopefully. 

Grandpa, who had given them their Miraculous, didn’t seem to care. Both were aware that he knew they were the superheroes, and he was aware they knew he knew, and they were aware that he knew that they knew, but nobody said anything to each other. It would be weird to ask their grandfather for superhero/friendship advice. It surprised the two of them, however, when he set them on a team-building task. 

“You two need to work on your teamwork,” said Francisco Guerra. “You task for training today is to paint the walls of the dojo’s new wing.”

Isabel and Ed groaned. Grandpa shoved a can of paint and a dripping brush into Ed’s hands and a paint-splattered book into Isabel’s. 

“Here are your tools.”

“Why do we need a book?” asked Isabel. 

“It has instructions on how to paint walls correctly. Follow the book, or I’ll make you paint over the walls again,” Grandpa said seriously. 

“Ugh, fine.”

Grandpa pointed Ed and Isabel to the empty wing, and the two of them walked there, chatting about random, unimportant things. They had little to talk about these days. 

Ed was wheezing by the time they got to the room. Paint was heavy, and he wasn’t in superhero mode. Isabel flopped the book down on the floor, which was already covered in plastic sheets for the paint job. The paint on the book was old and sticky. 

“Jeez, who needs a book to paint?” Isabel said, attempting to tug the book open, which was kept shut by the old, gooey paint covering the pages. “And why won’t this stupid book open?” 

Wait a sec-

“Don’t get any paint on you,” said Ed, watching.

Oh no-

They were each able to look at each other, horrified, before Isabel’s body transformed in a flash of red, and Ed’s transformed in a flash of green. They stared at each other for a few seconds, attempting to register what just happened. 

“Wait-“

“Wait a second-“

“WHAT-“

“HOW ARE WE THIS STUPID-“

Soon enough, the two were bent over in laughter. Isabel gasped for breath and reached out to grab Ed’s shoulder in a hug, just as she did at the end of their first battle. 

Before she could say anything, someone banged on the door. The two superheroes froze. 

“Get back to work!” Grandpa yelled, then grumbled, “I knew I’d regret giving you guys those Miraculous…”

And so Isabel and Ed, Spinner and the Artist, used their powers to get the job done, and when Grandpa had given them the all clear on their paint job, they launched themselves back to Ed’s room to talk about all the escapades they’d done as superheroes and swap stories about hiding their secret identities. After so many months of secrets, it was good to finally play videogames and relax with nothing to hide between them. The superhero duo was content. 

And they would be content, until the next month, when a new member joined their ranks.


End file.
